March 4, 2016

Autobiography in Fiction

When people ask me where I get my ideas from, I tell them I use the world around me. Life is so abundant, if you can write down the actual details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else. Even if you relocate the French doors, fast-spinning overhead fan, small red Dell laptop, and low black kneeling chair from your office that you work in in Sydney into an Artist’s Atelier in the south of France at another time, the story will have truth and groundedness.

In Hermione Hoby’s interview with Elizabeth Strout in last Saturday’s Guardian newspaper the Pulitzer prize winner said her stories have always begun with a person, and her eyes and ears are forever open to these small but striking human moments, squirreling them away for future use. “Character, I’m just interested in character,” she said.

I’m a storyteller, a bower-bird who collects odd glances, small gestures, snatches of conversation, quirks of nature and turns them into fiction. I create worlds peopled with the marginalised, the eccentric, the ordinary and the extraordinary.
Working with other writers to develop their stories is stimulating and keeps me motivated too. Having the privilege to edit anthologies of stories by some of the best writers in Australia and now also India is an absolute joy. Sharing stories, vignettes, observations and adventures with you in this blog is my latest venture and I invite you to join me.
More at:
http://www.roundtablewriting.com/SharonRundleBionote.html
@sharonrundle
Sharon